British buyers must wait for diesel M5

Love it

Boo not in the uk....

hold on... I live in the vaterland!! Yay

... Oh.. I can't afford it.. The missus just told me. Boo ...

M has lost its soul.  

M has lost its soul.

Lovers of BMW

constantly harp on about wonderful German engineering, and they cant even engineer or perhaps be bothered to engineer a car with AWD suitable for the right hand drive market. Nothing wrong with diesel but this just smacks of lack of interest or forward planning. Funny how Audi dont seem to have that problem..

Citytiger wrote: constantly

Or they sat down, worked out what the engineering change would cost, did some market research among likely buyers, and figured out that sales would be marginal, causing much murmur from beardy types on forums who would never buy these cars new anyway. Audi is very different, because they are designed first and foremost with the front wheels driven. Maybe the whole driving on the left, wheels on the right thing wasnt so clever and should have been switched back when it was easier. And really, given the weather in the UK, the need for 4WD unless you are going off road is negligible.

That said, 4WD is a blessing and the only reason my current car is not an M5 Touring (which is great in its own way) but an RS6. The M550xD Touring would be tasty though... almost all the performance and 4WD happiness and much less pain at the pumps.

Backlash . . .

If you PREFER the diesel driving experience, then a petrol M5 wont do it for you will it ? People who prefer diesels dont generally start having a go at petrols, so why do the people who prefer petrols always have to start knocking performance diesels ? The petrol M5 is a great example of a performance petrol, the M550d is a great example of a performance diesel. Like petrols ? buy the petrol one. Like diesels ? Buy the diesel one. Simple, end of, no need for diesel-knocking.

Anyway, its a load of cr*p that it "can only be mated to all wheel drive running gear", it would be quite easy to build a rear drive only version for the UK, all the other engines in the range can be had with rear or all wheel drive and this engine isnt any different. Its just the twin turbo with an extra turbo in the vee, cant see how thats gonna effect the number of driven wheels.